


We're The ATF, Mopping Up What's Left

by Pluppelina



Series: I Need Some Fine Wine And You Need To Be Nicer [14]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Implied Violence, Post-Reichenbach, Sebastian is obsessed, Threats, hinted at past Jim Moriarty/Sebastian Moran
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-20
Updated: 2012-07-20
Packaged: 2017-11-10 08:27:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/464247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pluppelina/pseuds/Pluppelina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Sebastian gets himself caught.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We're The ATF, Mopping Up What's Left

Marching into the London Zoo and the tiger cage only to shoot them all dead might have been a very stupid way to get arrested, but it caught the attention of the right people. By the time Mycroft Holmes and his men come for him, he’s sitting cross-legged between the bodies, casually playing around with one of the vipers.

“I personally liked the spider metaphor better,” Mycroft Holmes says as means of introduction. Sebastian doesn’t even bother to look up at him as he replies; “You don’t have to spend every fucking day looking at his tongue.”

Then there are strong hands on him, lifting the snake away and pulling him to his feet. He’s shoved into the back of a van, blindfolded, transported. The silence under the black hood isn’t simply his own; he can feel Jim there, Jim holding his breath, excited to see what’ll happen next. Sebastian wonders the same thing.

Once they take the hood off him, he’s standing in a windowless room and white tiles is all he can see for a moment, before his eyes fall on a man standing just in front of him, holding a change of clothes.

“Strip,” the man says, and Sebastian does. After he’s searched and washed, clothed and fed, shown to a cell. It’s bare and simple and it feels safe, because he can’t turn around and see Jim’s things all over the place, can’t accidentally set his sights on the last book Jim read and as a consequence have to compulsively finish it in one sitting only to try and get a sense of what might’ve been going through Jim’s mind. Maybe, Sebastian thinks, this is what coming home feels like.

They didn’t let him keep his collar and he can’t bring himself to think of Jim just now, when he’s finally found a safe nook in the world that Jim hasn’t poisoned with memories, and yet, he falls asleep and he sleeps well. He feels back at war and at war he’s always slept like a baby. Perhaps his professor wasn’t so off when he said Sebastian was addicted to danger. The good night makes it much more obvious how badly he’s slept before so when breakfast comes he’s grateful that his paper mug contains coffee rather than tea.

When he’s taken to interrogation he finds himself face to face with Mycroft Holmes once more and he’s certain that if he had the energy to waste he’d be surprised that someone in such a position will deal directly with someone like him. Catching Jim must be really high up on the government’s list of priorities... Or maybe, after what happened to the littler Holmes, it’s very high on the Holmesian list of priorities. He’s told to take a seat so he does, on the opposite side of a little table. This room has no fake mirrors.

“Sebastian Moran... Where is your employer?” Holmes the elder says, in a way that indicates he’s only going to ask once. Sebastian shakes his head because he honestly couldn’t say. Jenkins made it so he couldn’t keep the ashes and he hasn’t even seen a mirage Jim anywhere since they left the zoo. For the first time since his boss’s death, he’s alone. “I can only assume he sent you here for a reason.”

Sebastian remains silent because it wasn’t a question. They don’t know that Jim is dead and maybe Sebastian shouldn’t tell them. Maybe he shouldn’t let on the real reasons he’s here, the dual sword of safety and punishment, how he has always lived in imprisonment and can’t handle being a free man any longer. Outside of here, he’s a free man... He doesn’t have anyone to guard him anymore.

“I don’t have an employer,” he says, finally, and it sounds so flat and horrible even to him. Mycroft’s eyes seem to narrow for a moment. Still, his face betrays nothing.

“Do you have an alternative definition of your relationship with Jim Moriarty?” he asks, very politely still, and Sebastian wishes that he would take the silk gloves off. He can see the little warning signs all over, how this man would like nothing more than to tear him limb from limb, and it makes him shiver.

“I don’t have one,” he says, with the same flat sound as before, because Jim is dead, and dead men don’t have employees or affairs or lovers or body guards or pets or people they trust or people who keep them from killing themselves. At best, Sebastian Moran is the man who failed Jim Moriarty, and at worst, he is nothing at all

“We have more than ample proof that you’re lying,” Mycroft says and suddenly Sebastian’s dog collar is on the table. Sebastian’s hands itch to reach out for it but he keeps himself in check. It doesn’t matter; he can see it on Mycroft’s face that he knows how badly Sebastian misses wearing it already. “‘To tiger, with love - x, x, x’.” 

Sebastian thinks that he’s trying to tell him something with that, but if so it goes right over his head, because all he can think of is the collar. “Can I have that back.”

“You can earn it,” Mycroft says and Sebastian’s traitorous cock twitches because anytime Jim said that it meant through sex. He tries to will it away while Mycroft looks on amusedly, and he can tell that he knows even before he says, “Not quite what I had in mind.”

“No,” Sebastian says, and his tone clearly indicates that he means no, he won’t earn it, because he knows what Mycroft wants; names and bank account numbers and computer passwords and all the other things that Sebastian supposes could sell Jim out. Jim, who is dead, because Sebastian couldn’t protect him. The least he can do is to let the power vacuum Jim left behind destroy everything the man ever loved in total chaos, rather than letting Mycroft Holmes and all the king’s men do it with perfect order.

Mycroft leans forward on the table, putting his elbows down firmly on it with the air of every mafia crook from every clichéd movie Sebastian has ever seen, and says smoothly, “I hope you realise that it isn’t a problem to us if you won’t cooperate. We have the means to loosen your tongue and, if proven necessary, to make you disappear.”

Sebastian supposes it’s intended to intimidate him but he only smiles at it. Yes. Finally. Finally something that he can lose himself in instead of his own head, something new that can take over what Jim always was; an absolute authority to fight with, to come to terms with, to give in to. Except this time, he’s not going to give in. This time, he isn’t going to fail Jim. He has found another fight he can fight for Jim, another thing he can do for him, and this time, he won’t fuck it up. This time, he’ll do good so that maybe, once they kill him, he’ll be absolved in Jim’s eyes. It’s something to hold on to, the thought of Jim welcoming him to hell with open arms. In here, he can’t kill himself, and the only thing he needs to do to earn forgiveness is to keep his mouth shut. It’s perfect.

“Show him,” Mycroft says and in one motion two men have stepped out of the darkened corners. Sebastian is still smiling when the first blow lands; being hurt again after so long really does feel like coming home.


End file.
